B006OAL1QM EBOK (22 page)

In January 1935 as we have already seen, the order appeared that artists and lecturers could not leave Germany to fulfil contracts without the authorisation of the President of the appropriate section of the Reich Chamber of Culture. In April 1935 the Chamber of Literature was empowered to draw up a black list of books considered to be hostile to Nazi policy. Publishers thereafter had to consult this list before reprinting any book as well as submitting any new work they wanted to publish to the Chamber of Literature. In the same month it was further decreed that independent newspapers could be abolished in favour of party newspapers if they offered unfair competition! In November 1936 Goebbels even went so far as to prohibit criticism of the arts.
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Other decrees prohibited the publication of speeches made by Ministers, the quotation of early speeches by Hitler without prior approval, the acceptance by Germans of any Nobel Prize. This last (a decree by Hitler, not Goebbels) followed on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the German pacifist writer Carl von Ossietzky, who had been confined in a concentration camp since the night of the Reichstag fire. Goebbels was forced to release him when the Nobel limelight fell suddenly upon him in November 1936. In any case it scarcely mattered since he was a dying man. In 1937 Hitler instituted his own German National Prizes for Sciences, Art and Learning. It was difficult, however, to make German writers respond to the inspiration of Nazism on a level suitable to sustain the full national publicity involved in public awards. When, in 1935, the Schiller Prize for contemporary drama became due for award (it was founded originally in 1859 and was presented every six years) no one was thought by officialdom to be worthy of the prize.
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In the face of this flood of decrees, orders and rules few people dared to write, speak or publish without consulting the letter of the law and checking their position. Jokes could not even be made in cabarets traditionally dedicated to political irreverence, such as the Katacombe and Tingel-Tangel in Berlin. A press hand-out worded in the stiffest official language appeared during May 1935 in which these cabarets were condemned as the resorts of Jews or other elements hostile to the State. “An actress impersonating a prostitute,” the statement says, “made light of the collections for the Winter Aid Fund, and agitation took place against collections in general; military and Party uniforms were calumniated, the organisation of the party made a laughing stock, and the conscript system slurred. A hundred per cent Jew, who as such enjoys only the rights of a guest in Germany, dared to make disparaging comments on political events in Germany.” Arrests and questioning by the police followed. “When questioned, some participants in the cabaret's political performance proved to be partly very superficially, partly not at all informed about important establishments of the new State which they made the object of their sarcasm; they will have the opportunity to make up for this shortcoming by decent and solid work in a camp.”
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Not all cabaret artists were as easy to control as this. Werner Finck, for example, was a compère famous for his wit who, early in the régime, got into serious trouble for raising his right hand in the official salute and saying
“Die aufgehobene Rechse”,
which has the double meaning “raised right hand” and “suspended rights”. Goebbels had Finck put in a concentration camp, but thought it politic to release him after a while because of his fame and influence as a wit.

Sir Nevile Henderson also refers to “one irrepressible but very popular comic artist in Munich who spent his time in and out of the Dachau concentration camp”.
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This was Karl Valentin; he used to tell the story of Dachau with its soldiers, its machine-guns, its dogs, and its successive barriers of wire fencing, some of which was electrified. But, he would add, all this was nothing to him. He could get in any time.

In 1937 Goebbels decided it was time to purge the museums and art galleries of the pictures he regarded as degenerate and he planned— again wrongly—to stage a special exhibition of Degenerate Art. The exhibition was a great success and Goebbels sent it on tour. But who was to say wherein the success lay? For many people this seemed to be their last chance to see pictures free from the swastika and uniform. Heinrich Hoffmann records that he prevailed on Hitler to get some of the paintings saved from the stigma of being included in the exhibition. According to Hoffmann Goebbels wanted to burn all pictures which were taken from the galleries as unacceptable to the National Socialist conception of art; among the works condemned were pictures by Renoir, Gauguin and Van Gogh. Hoffmann claims that he prevailed on Hitler to stop this vandalism.
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Soon, indeed, Göring, Goebbels and Ribbentrop, like Hitler, became art collectors, bargaining against each other in the auctions until the time came when the pictures belonging to collections in foreign countries became the spoils of war.

Goebbels initiated regular conferences for those who had managed to stay employed in the creative professions. We have already referred to his speech at a conference of German film-makers convened very shortly after the establishment of his Ministry. Soon a system of congresses was initiated at which it was possible for the Government to make clear to practitioners in such public arts as the film what it was they should practise. In 1935, for example, Goebbels organised an International Film Congress at which he personally put forward certain principles for German film-making. They were not very original. He emphasised that the film had its own technique distinct from that of the theatre on which in the past it had been far too dependent. “More than all other forms of art,” he said, “the film must be popular in the best sense of the word.” Nor must it lose its strong inner connection with the people. Films should be strictly contemporary in spirit even when dealing with subjects set in the past; once they achieved this quality they would bridge the nations and become the “spokesmen of our age”. Finally, he said, the State must be prepared to subsidise film production as it subsidises the other arts.
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For Goebbels the development of the cinema became the most absorbing of his duties. Both he and Hitler had always enjoyed films as members of the cinema audience, and the glamour of film production and of the pretty women associated with it attracted him now that he suddenly found himself in a position of authority over the industry. Before long he was to come completely under the spell of the cinema, seeing films privately night after night either at the Ministry or at one or other of his luxurious homes which were all equipped for projection.

At the start he decided against outright nationalisation of the industry, because of the complex organisation of the individual companies and the important Links that existed between them and the foreign distributors, which gave German production a valuable export market for her films. The industry was dominated by certain large companies; the most prominent of these was UFA, which had come under the control of the industrialist Hugenberg, whose nationalist politics were eventually to make him the ally of Hitler. Hugenberg had control of the two most widely shown of the German newsreels, UFA and Deulig. Though Hugenberg's prime concern was to make money through UFA and its associated chain of cinemas, he saw to it that the newsreels reflected his own standpoint and that certain of UFA's feature films were nationalist in their subject and treatment. In 1937, however, Hugenberg was bought out on Goebbels' own terms and UFA became state-controlled.

Goebbels, as we have seen, set up the Reich Film Chamber to control the industry. It was divided into ten sections to administer Production, Studios, Research and Technical Matters, Short and Propaganda Production, Home Distribution, Foreign Distribution, Cinemas, Noncommercial Exhibition, General Administration, and the Film Group, the last section concerned with registering all film workers as suitable persons to be employed in the industry from the point of view of the Party. The control of film scripts was exercised from the Film Department of the Ministry itself, and a Film Credit Bank was created to centralise the financing of production. In February 1934 a Reich Film Law was passed setting up a Censorship Committee under the control of Goebbels' Ministry to judge every film produced in Germany. Six grades of commendation were recognised. A film was either (1) particularly valuable politically and artistically, or (2) valuable politically and artistically, or (3) valuable politically, or (4) valuable artistically, or (5) valuable culturally, or, finally (6) of educational value. The greatest value was obviously political. Goebbels created an annual award for the best German film, and the first of these was given to a UFA production,
Refugees,
directed by Gustav Ucicky, who was famous for his nationalistic subjects. Among the early Nazi productions were
Bleeding Germany, Storm Trooper Brandt, Hitler Youth Quex,
celebrating the Hitler Youth movement, and
Hans Westmar,
a film based on the Horst Wessel story. Indeed, Goebbels was wise enough not to press the industry to make more than a few prestige feature films directly concerned with propaganda, nor did they attract the audiences which flocked to the normal kind of box-office musical, comedy or drama. The German film industry was denuded of much of its creative talent through the various purges that sent directors, writers, designers, cameramen and others to seek political asylum and work in the studios abroad. Although many films of merit were produced in spite of the circumstances imposed by Goebbels' Ministry, creative work in any full or true sense was almost impossible and German cinema sank into a moribund artistry dependent on escapism. Goebbels' dream of a major development in films inspired by the Nazi régime never succeeded. To this there was only one exception, the director Leni Riefenstahl whose personal belief in Nazism and personal devotion to Hitler were matched by a talent of unusual power. It is ironic that she worked as an individualist with the direct authority of Hitler and had as little to do with Goebbels as possible. The films she made for Hitler were masterpieces of propaganda—in particular
The Triumph of the Will
(1936), a pæan of praise derived from her cameramen's coverage of the Nuremberg Rally of 1934, and
The Olympiad
(1938), in which she used the occasion of the Olympic Games visiting Germany to turn the event into a glorification of Hitler.

Goebbels as a member of the Reichstag.
Left, above,
leaving his car outside the Reichstag, 1930.
Right, above,
entering the Reichstag, 1930.
Below,
in his car with Frick (extreme right), 1932.

Goebbels' marriage, 21 December 1931. Hitler acted as best man.
Above,
the wedding ceremony.
Below,
the procession after the ceremony.